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Because Facebook refuses to make thumbnails of linked horizontal images, I upload each one manually here. It’s the only way to share Mimi & Eunice comics on FB, unfortunately.

3 comments to Protecting Artists

I still think it’s mainly YouTube at fault here. They want GEMA to accept their terms without compromise and simply blocked everything. Now it looks like GEMA ordered them to, while they actually just wanted money for the views (which they actually do distribute among the artists [that register with them], but not fairly, there is a heavy bias toward classical music for example, because, you know, it’s culture and stuff).
But of course, we’re all (with good reason) prejudiced against GEMA, so it’s easy to see them as the villain here (well, they started it by asking for money, so technically they are), but it’s actually Google who act childish.

In this particular case I think that argument isn’t true. It’s more like GEMA likes to have a fixed amount of money per view (e.g. 0,50 €), which is most likely way more than what can be recouped by showing some advertisement half the users are blocking anyway. And IIRC GEMA wants that fixed sum no matter whether someone watched a video entirely or only the first few seconds.

Maybe other royalty collection societies being able to find an acceptable agreement and all (major) labels telling GEMA to get its act together is an indication, that GEMA is at fault here. I mean it was the GEMA (requested by VG Musikedition), after all, which went after kindergartens for royalties (German link).